Joy in the United Kingdom over the return of two detainees in Iran for years

The relatives of two British-Iranians sentenced to several years in prison in Iran on charges they have always denied expressed their joy on Thursday after their return to the United Kingdom at the end of a long and complicated diplomatic campaign.

“Happiness in a Photo,” Elika Ashoori tweeted, posting an image of her father retired engineer Anoosheh Ashoori, 67, and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, smiling and surrounded by their loved ones at the Brize Norton military base in southwest England, where they arrived at dawn.

Ashoori was arrested in August 2017 while visiting his mother and sentenced to 10 years in prison for espionage on behalf of Israel.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an employee of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the philanthropic branch of the eponymous news agency, was arrested in April 2016 after visiting her family with her 22-month-old daughter.

Accused of conspiring to overthrow the Islamic Republic, she was initially sentenced to five years' imprisonment, followed by one more on other charges.

London announced its release on Wednesday, while reporting that it had paid Tehran an old debt of £394 million (520 million dollars, 470 million euros), without linking the two cases.

Accompanied by her father, Richard, Zaghari-Ratcliffe's daughter, Gabriella, aged 7, welcomed her mother whom she had not seen for more than two years.

“He slept in bed between the two of them last night,” his aunt Rebecca Ratcliffe told British television on Thursday. “It's a very special moment for the three of us,” she said, stressing that the little girl “hasn't had a childhood with her two parents.”

After her mother's arrest in Tehran in 2016, Gabriella had initially lived with her grandparents in Iran before joining her father in the UK in October 2019.

Rebecca Ratcliffe compared their reunion to “Christmas morning, when you wait for Santa Claus and he finally arrives”. “I think they are going to be in a house or accommodation provided by the foreign ministry for a few days. And then we look forward to seeing you over the weekend,” Nazanin's father-in-law John Ratcliffe told the BBC.

He claimed to be “enormously proud” of his son, who campaigned tirelessly for six years, including hunger strikes, to secure his wife's release.

British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs James Cleverly told Sky News that the change of government in Iran has “certainly helped” advance “incredibly difficult” negotiations.

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